For the future of innovation in the United States, few things seem as important as access to broadband Internet connections. The FCC seems to realize this, which is why they’ve set up the National Broadband Plan. And yet, we’re screwed.
As Harvard Law professor Yochai Benkler lays out in an excellent op-ed today in the New York Times, this new broadband plan may sound great, but it won’t go nearly far enough. The reason is that there is simply nowhere near enough competition in almost all of the markets in this country. In fact, under the new plan, some 85% of homes covered would have no choice when it comes to a provider. So while it’s great that just about everyone will potentially have broadband access in 2020, plenty likely won’t be able to afford it.
And even those lucky enough to have a choice, are probably only going to be able to choose between two options — and again, both of those are likely to be very expensive. The U.S. has the highest broadband prices among advanced nations, while countries like Japan and France get faster (and better) services, for a fraction of the price many of us pay. Again, it’s all about competition. So why do we put up with it? Because the U.S. government has no backbone and ruins its own ideas (such as the National Broadband Plan) because they give into corporate lobbyists.
As Benkler points out in his piece, Time Warner is quite pleased that it can set higher prices due to a lack of competition. Meanwhile, Comcast is raking in just about a billion dollars in profit each quarter thanks in large part to their pricing bullshit.
Is it expensive to lay down the necessary fiber for these super-fast networks? Of course. But there are plenty of ways that competitors could help the big players offset those costs if the government would simply make them open the pipes. But the big players don’t want that — they’re perfectly happy to pay the large upfront costs to ensure that they can reap the much larger rewards on the other end thanks to this lack of competition.
We may have but one hope.
While plenty are wary of how big Google is becoming, the Internet giant has so-far proved to be on the right side with regard to universal Internet access. They were instrumental in making sure the wireless spectrum would be (at least somewhat) open, and now they’re pushing the wired broadband movement in the right direction too with their insanely fast fiber push. While the FCC’s 100 Squared plan would put 100 megabit-per-second broadband in people’s homes by 2020, Google wants to put 1 gigabit-per-second connections in people’s homes much sooner.
Yes, Google is talking on a much smaller scale (500,000 homes vs. 100 million), but, if the initial response is any indication, Google may become a much, much bigger player in this space than they envision right now.
We’ve written a couple of stories about cities doing some wacky things to get Google’s attention so that they might bring the broadband to their cities (here’s Topeka, Kansas and Baltimore, Maryland, for example). But there are dozens of other cities also foaming at the mouth for access. Some examples:
- Longview, Texas has a Twitter account devoted to it and a website
- Both are true for Jersey City, NJ as well
- San Mateo, CA is issuing press releases to the media about its excitement and is getting TechCrunch 50 Red Beacon to lobby on its behalf
- Fresno, CA has a Facebook fan page for fiber with about 7,500 fans so far
- Grand Rapids, MI has a website, Facebook fan page (with over 33,000 fans), and Twitter account
- And yesterday, Greenville, SC had thousands of citizens line up to create a huge Google logo
Those are just a few of the ones we’ve been tipped about. The reaction around the country to Google’s idea should make it very clear that the people of this country are demanding better access. And yet, the government won’t take the necessary steps to open the market up, and let it bloom because the lobbyists from the companies that stand to lose the most are actually the ones in control. If Google, one of the largest companies in this country, only believes they can afford to hook up 50,000 to 500,000 homes with their plan, how is any other company expected to compete with the incumbent players?
They won’t. Not unless the government grows some balls and backs real openness.
[photo: 20th Century Fox]
Don’t forget Philadelphia – http://gigabitphilly.com
Surprised I’ve yet to see a project crop up in NYC…
Philly’s a great city, but with Comcast HQ there it seems very unlikely that Google would choose to go head to head with them there.
Baltimore’s a green-field deployment with great assets, like the Hubble space telescope. Check it out!
Google stated they are looking for cities with between 50,000 and 100,000 people. How is Philadelphia going to hide the fact that it has over 5 million citizens?
NYC has 8.3 million, they shouldn’t bother either.
Greenville had about 2,000 citizens in the lineup with several thousand more observing!
I’d say that’s better than making twitter accounts!
I hope Google goes ahead with the high speed broadband.
Sometime our gov’t appears to have no backbone at all…
About google broadband, Goog says it will be capable of delivering speeds more than 100x faster than typical U.S. Internet connections with up to one gigabit per second. It will do so at a “competitive” price. Preview: http://bit.ly/google-isp-how-to-get-it
On the contrary, this video about google (darth-vader), is still boggling my mind
아아, 지못미 미국.. OTL
English only , man
Correction- there were thousands at #GoogleonMain in Greenville, SC.
The US govt is broken… Big companies already run the country – most for their own gain… This is another example of that except that it’s a move that will benefit people. Still I doubt Google is doing it from the goodness of their hearts! :)
The point is to increase competition, thereby not just increasing speeds, but also decreasing cost and increasing availability.
Sure, Google benefits from people having faster access to Google’s services, but the benefit is mutual.
***Don’t forget, too, that Baton Rouge, LA is officially in the running:
http://geauxfibr.com/
Life will be good for those who are currently building the next generation of file sharing and CDN software….
Limelight, Cogent, Pier1, ect… will suffer greatly at the hands of 1GBPS fiber at home.
Akamai as well. These billion dollar NASDAQ giants will be obliterated in one silent swoop.
Korea will have fiber in most homes by 2012, so either we let Korea take over the world, or we get with the program. If Korea gets ahead of us, our global network base will shift from America to Korea and China. Jobs will be lost. People will suffer.
Akamai, brightcove and other American bandwidth providers are the past. This is the future. We are ready to deprecate these major NASDAQ players right now.
You also failed to mention a critical point.
As I mentioned on Matt Cutts (google)’s blog the other day:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/clarifying-valleywag-comments/#comment-497836
The NSA, or National Security Agency for newbs, copies ALL internet traffic going through US telecoms.
So with 1GBPS, that would make their storage capacity limits increase exponentially. It may cause great shortfalls in budgets.
South Korea probably has no such mandate for that type of wire tapping on the entire internet of their country, nor the software algorithms to organize and make intelligence out of it on that great scale.
So when you blame the government, keep in mind that they must filter the entire internet, and if the entire internet grows exponentially, their resources to handle that will shrink in a corresponding manner.
Your country honestly copies every single email/data transaction/search etc that goes on through every single internet connection?
Im only young and from England, so I’ve never heard of any such thing. Didn’t even know that was legal???
I want to apply for the position of the Queen.
Can I apply online?
I want the tax money I gave the Canadian government to pay for your unelected monarch’s son and his whore.
http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2009/11/26/11929816-sun.html
“They came, they saw, they spent the shirt off our backs.”
I “Didn’t even know that was legal???”.
So will I be getting a check or a direct deposit?
Seriously, what the hell has this got to do with the topic of broadband? Ridiculous.
And for the record, in my opinion, half the monarch need to be shown the door. They take a lot more off their own country than they do elsewhere, and we cant get rid of the f•ckers.
And nobody in the UK can even stand Charles and Camilla, who, for the record, is not the Queen, but the Queens son and his whore of a wife.
fair enough
If you believe that it isn’t happening in the UK, you’re a fool.
excellent post MG Siegler !
yea great post. loved your corporatist US government comment. spot on
Is there a government out there that doesn’t monitor, ration, and/or spy on internet goings-on? I doubt it.
1 gigabyte per second of information to home. Whoops. Incredibly fast and tempting
Don’t leave out the great city of Dayton, Ohio! http://www.averageandawesome.com/
Google and their 500K homes aren’t going to save you.
The FCC and their National Broadband Plan aren’t going to save you.
The hatred and competition between the phone company and the cable company is the thing that’s going to save you. Just take one look at the Long Island and New Jersey regions where Cablevision has to compete with FiOS across entire municipalities.
Demand more from your cable company. Demand more from your phone company. Demand that your municipality allow both to provide competition and not hamstring each of them with requirements for new parks, public access upgrades etc. Encourage your state to adopt legislation like New Jersey – you’ll get more competition, lower prices and better service.
http://forum.cabletv.com/verizon-fios/410-new-jersey-fios-statewide-franchise.html
What’s the cost of 1 GBPS plan unlimited per month in US??
Probably can’t find 1 gigabit offered to a US household!
Just out of interest, what are the average prices for broadband in America?
I live in the UK, and am currently on 50mbps for £22 a month ($30).
Whats that in comparison to what you guys currently have available? I have no idea what services or plans are available in the US, thus my question.
:-)
I get 20/5 service from Verizon FiOS – it’s bundled in so it’s tough to break down the cost without TV service.
If I just want internet service, I can get:
15 Mbps / 5 Mbps – $54.99
25 Mbps / 25 Mbps – $69.99
50 Mbps / 20 Mbps – $144.99
I’ve noticed that I can always get my advertised speed (unlike some other providers). However, many websites do not have the capability to actually take advantage of the full pipe. At this point, I’m not interested in upgrading to a higher tier.
Wow, that really is expensive.
Now i see why you guys are complaining about the broadband in your country, quite rightly too!!
I would Buy it for that speed my home can’t get 4Mbps ..
Take A look to our price in GCC Qatar ..
http://www.qtel.qa/ProductServicesLinks.do?prodtype=2&prodId=370
divided by 3.65 .. :)
I have DSL ~ 5Mbs/1Mbs – $50/month
I have 20/5 from Verizon and I pay about $50. It is the best option in my area so I pay but I know it is a lot.
In India, you get wireless broadband (via a USB dongle), with a maximum advertised speed of 3.1Mbps.
It costs about Rs 600 ($12) per month for a 1 GB data. If your data download in a month is greater than 1 GB you need to pay extra.
For businesses you can get a dedicated fibre line etc, that is different. But an average broadband user uses such wireless dongles which are becoming very popular and work in most cities.
MG,
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this:
The monopoly our telecom companies enjoy is sold to us under the guise that the upfront costs are too much to bear for any single firm.
However, what if I was willing to put up the money? What if, a group of people, were willing to make the investment? Would that enable us to break the monopoly? I’d really like to know the answer to this.
There are a handful of municipalities that have run their own fiber, or their own internet access. Inevitably, they get challenged by the local telco, who were previously promised sole access to the phone or TV service for that area. However, if you can beat the legal challenge from the local companies, you’re pretty much home free.
Of course, now you’ll have to figure out how to get the right of way to dig up the streets or figure out how to rent access to the utility poles or underground conduit.
It’s not just the government that has no backbone, it’s the voters who put them, and keep them there. Grow some balls and vote the right way; make your own choice and don’t let lobbist groups tell you how to vote! Vote November 2010!!!
We need more technical awareness in congress!!!
It was thousands not hundreds in Greenville last night. 2000 with glow sticks and several thousand more observers.
Is it not ridiculous that you ask a huge monopolistic company to resolve a monopoly market problem ?
no, i guess its not
If you add one more monopolistic company to the monopolistic market, market will remain in monopoly condition.
You should allow small independent companies to participate in the market.
But you American are so enthusiastic about those huge companies Google, General Motors, Chrysler, Coca-Cola, since they are so typical for your type of capitalism.
If you add one more monopolistic company to the monopolistic market, you get… competition, not monopoly.
The advancement of our technology is soon going to come down to how fast, cheap, and available our internet speeds are. It’s going to eventually need to become a fundamental human right to have the best internet connection possible at all times.
We still have old men running the corporations and governments and they don’t fully understand it’s importance and potential. It’s just a matter of time…
It is not a human right, it is a service.
Hey! This is Susan from Greenville, SC. Thanks for the coverage. We had over 2000 volunteers for the event that we can verify. Please let me know if you need any more information before making an edit to your article.
Go #LuckyGVL & #GoogleOnMain!!
S.
It is embarrassing when I read stories of local companies being denied the ability to offer internet at a solid price because a major company is suing them to stop them from simply competing. I mean, I thought that wasn’t even legal yet time and time again we hear this. How exactly does that work? “No, you can’t offer good service for a good price because that will put us out of business”? Is that it?
In this country of freedom of so much, we have these big companies running a basic monopoly on internet access and jacking up the prices to criminal levels
Agree
Small independent companies should be allowed to participate in the market.
No need to add one huge multi-billion behemoth. Please, more small companies.
Great post, thank you for pointing out the truth!
Why don’t other web based companies join in Google’s effort? For companies like Amazon, Yahoo etc.. faster internet is surely in their favor!
Don’t forget about Colorado Springs: http://googlefibercolorado.com
Thank you so much for this article. I hope everyone emails this to as many people as possible. 1Gbps should be the goal for 100 million households. Comcast, Verizon Fios and others will have 100mbps available to everyone by at least next year for a “premium” price. So, the infrastructure is already there to provide it to 100 million homes by at least 2012. 1gbps should be available to everyone by 2020 no doubt.
Go google, I hate congress. They are corrupt and lobbyists are destroying competition in this country.
I’m appalled that this article is advocating government regulation of broadband access. Silicon Valley was built on free market ideas. Government regulation will lead us nowhere good.
I’m also appalled that the article complains about Comcasts massive profits while ignoring the fact that Google also makes enormous profits.
well the government is already going about regulating it — they’re just doing a poor job of it. i’m all for a free market idea beating the system, but the system in place is too hard to beat, i fear.
and i did call google one of the biggest companies in this country.
I think google could afford to provide access to more than 500k homes, but that’s not the point of this. The point is for Google to show that this can be profitable, and self-sustaining. If they can show that’s the case, then other companies (comcast, at&t, etc.,) can follow with massive changes to their core product lines.
I don’t think Google wants to be in the ISP business — but they do want to encourage change which can benefit some of their product lines (youtube etc.,).
I’m not counting on high-speed fixed line service. I live in Silicon Valley… my house can get 1.5mb DSL or 15mb via cable. With the competition on the wireless side, I’ll get faster access via LTE++ before I get high-speed fixed line….
This is all so stupid because all you are doing is paving the way for Google to become the monopoly instead of AT&T, and covering up this big technocommunist resource grab with propaganda about helping peasants and workers in rural areas.
So let’s see, Google gets a bunch of cities to prostrate themselves before it for the chance to suck at its teet^H^H^H^H^H^H^H get free high-speed broadband connections?
ah, yes, it’s going to be so much better once we stop pretending and usher in our new overloads.
1) They’re not free. Google will be installing fiber optic network at no charge, but plans to offer a “competitive” rate for access.
2) There’s no monopoly on the fiber. It will be an open network, meaning other local providers can use it and offer competitive services as well.
Why would Google do this? 1. They’re always experimenting – they’re an engineering-driven comppany. 2. The kind of market research information they’re getting from around the country is actually cheaper for them to acquire this way, including the cost of laying the fiber since they control where that’ll be and can factor in costs easily, than it would be to hire marketing research teams to collect all of the same information.
I know i should just ignore this but really… “prostrate”? How about before you make any kind of attempt at political commentary you actually learn to spell and stop butchering your own language.
Perhaps you should follow your own advice.
prostrate, adj.
Of a person: lying with the face to the ground, in token of submission or humility, as in adoration, worship, or supplication; (hence more generally) lying stretched out on the ground, typically with the face downwards. Freq. in predicative or quasi-adverbial use, as in to fall prostrate, to lie prostrate, etc.
I think there should be more of a push from local municipally owned fiber because they can be competitive with the big players on price but have to fight off their anti-competitive behavior. Look at what happened in Lafayette, Louisiana as an example.